Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 59 (9164 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,929 Year: 4,186/9,624 Month: 1,057/974 Week: 16/368 Day: 16/11 Hour: 4/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   What IS Science And What IS NOT Science?
Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5903 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 51 of 304 (356397)
10-13-2006 9:14 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by jar
10-13-2006 7:59 PM


Re: Narrowing The Definition
To do science you must try to prove your assumption WRONG.
I'm not sure I completely agree with this restatement of Popper's Rule of Falsification, although I've heard a lot of variations similar to this one. In science, any claim must at least potentially have a way of being false. For example, even something as simple as "The sun will rise tomorrow" can - at least potentially - be falsified if the sun didn't rise tomorrow (it went nova, a massive comet struck the earth, the Vogon Constructor Fleet ended the experiment, etc). The claim that no human lifespan can exceed 130 years can be falsified by any one person living to age 131, etc.
On the falsification front, the difference between pseudoscience/non-science and science is that the former can not be falsified. The claims are either ambiguous ("Certain crystals can realign your energy center" - okay, so how do you tell if it is realigned? or out of alignment in the first place?), or they are invulnerable because they are inherently unfalsifiable (sometimes called the multiple out - an inexhaustible series of excuses that explains away evidence that would tend to falsify the claim - creationists are past masters of this type - think of the unevidenced claim of a "special environment" in the past that renders all dating methodology incorrect by 100's of orders of magnitude).
However, I've never met any scientist who deliberately sets out to disprove his own research claim (other peoples' definitely). In essence, then, I disagree with your formulation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 47 by jar, posted 10-13-2006 7:59 PM jar has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 78 by nator, posted 10-14-2006 4:42 PM Quetzal has not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024